How to Monitor a Website
Complete Guide for 2026
Learn everything about website monitoring—from basics to best practices. Set up your first monitor in under 5 minutes.
✓ No credit card required ✓ Set up in 2 minutes ✓ Free forever plan
What is Website Monitoring?
Website monitoring is an automated system that checks if your website is accessible and performing well. Think of it as a 24/7 watchdog that alerts you the moment something goes wrong.
Simple explanation: Instead of manually visiting your website every few minutes to check if it's working, monitoring software does it automatically and notifies you via email when there's a problem.
Types of Website Monitoring
1. Uptime Monitoring
Checks if your site is up or down
✓ HTTP status codes (200 = good, 500 = error)
✓ Check every 1-5 minutes
✓ Essential for all websites
2. SSL Certificate Monitoring
Tracks SSL certificate expiration
✓ Checks daily for expiration dates
✓ Alerts 30, 14, 7 days before expiry
✓ Prevents "Not Secure" warnings
3. Response Time Monitoring
Measures how fast your site responds
✓ Tracks Time to First Byte (TTFB)
✓ Alerts when site gets slow
✓ Important for SEO and UX
4. Content Monitoring
Checks for specific text or elements
✓ Detect website defacements
✓ Verify key elements (e.g., "Add to Cart")
✓ Advanced feature for critical pages
Why Monitor Your Website?
Detect Downtime Before Customers Complain
Without monitoring, you might not know your site is down until customers email or call. That's lost revenue and damaged reputation.
Average cost of downtime: $5,600 per minute for medium businesses
Maintain Customer Trust
When your site is down or slow, customers lose confidence. 79% of shoppers won't return to a site with poor performance.
First impression matters: Users form opinions in 50 milliseconds
SEO Benefits
Google penalizes sites with frequent downtime or slow response times. Monitoring helps you catch issues before they hurt your rankings.
Core Web Vitals: Site speed is now a Google ranking factor
SLA Compliance
If you promise 99.9% uptime to customers, you need monitoring to prove it. Track uptime history for contract compliance.
Legal requirement: Many SaaS contracts require uptime guarantees
How to Choose a Website Monitoring Tool
Frequent Checks (at least every 5 minutes)
Hourly checks are too slow. You want to catch downtime within minutes, not hours. Professional plans should offer 30-second or 1-minute checks.
Multiple Alert Channels
Email is essential, but SMS, Slack, or webhook integrations are valuable for urgent alerts. Make sure you'll actually see notifications when they arrive.
Historical Data and Reports
Track uptime over time (7 days minimum, 30+ days ideal). This helps you spot patterns, prove SLA compliance, and analyze trends.
Easy Setup (under 5 minutes)
If it takes 30 minutes to add a website, you won't use it consistently. Look for tools where you can add monitors in 2-3 minutes.
Affordable Pricing (free tier available)
Start with a free plan to test the service. Good monitoring tools offer 3-5 sites free, with affordable paid plans ($5-15/month) for unlimited sites.
SSL Monitoring Included
With Let's Encrypt certificates expiring every 90 days, SSL monitoring is essential. Make sure it's included (at least in paid plans).
✨ pokemy.site checks all these boxes
Free plan: 3 websites, 5-minute checks, email alerts. Professional: Unlimited sites, 30-second checks, SSL monitoring, response time tracking for ~$8.50 USD/month (charged in BRL: R$ 45.00).
Step-by-Step: Setting Up Your First Monitor
Follow this guide to start monitoring in under 5 minutes
Sign up for pokemy.site (Free)
Visit pokemy.site and click "Start Free". Enter your email and create a password. No credit card required.
⏱️ Takes 30 seconds
Add Your Website
From the dashboard, click "Add Website". Enter your URL (e.g., https://yoursite.com). Choose check frequency: 5 minutes (free) or 30 seconds (Professional).
⏱️ Takes 1 minute
Configure Alerts
Add your email address for downtime alerts (already filled with signup email). Optionally, set alert conditions: downtime only, or include slow response time alerts.
⏱️ Takes 1 minute
Test Your Monitor
Click "Test Now" to run a manual check immediately. Verify the alert email arrives in your inbox. Check dashboard for the first data point showing your site is online.
⏱️ Takes 1 minute
You're Done! 🎉
Your website is now monitored 24/7. Add more sites (up to 3 on free plan, unlimited on Professional). Relax knowing you'll be alerted if anything goes wrong.
Best Practices for Website Monitoring
DO: Check Every 1-5 Minutes
Frequent checks (1-5 minutes) catch issues fast. For critical sites, 30-second checks are ideal.
DON'T: Check Only Once Per Hour
Hourly checks mean you could miss 59 minutes of downtime. That's potentially thousands in lost revenue.
DO: Monitor Key Pages
Don't just monitor homepage. Check /checkout, /login, /pricing, and key landing pages separately.
DON'T: Ignore SSL Certificates
Expired SSL = "Not Secure" warning = 85% of visitors leave. Monitor certificates monthly minimum.
DO: Set Up Redundancy
For critical sites, use 2 monitoring services. If one has an outage, the other alerts you.
DON'T: Alert on Every Spike
Use 2-check confirmation to avoid false alarms. One bad check could be network blip, two means real problem.
Common Website Monitoring Mistakes
❌ Mistake #1: Not monitoring at all
"My site has never gone down" = "I don't know when my site goes down." You can't fix what you don't measure.
Solution: Start with pokemy.site's free plan today. Takes 2 minutes.
❌ Mistake #2: Monitoring only the homepage
Your checkout page could be broken while homepage works fine. Monitor critical pages separately.
Solution: Add /checkout, /pricing, /login as separate monitors.
❌ Mistake #3: Ignoring SSL expiration warnings
"I'll remember to renew my certificate" rarely works. Let's Encrypt auto-renewal can fail.
Solution: Enable SSL monitoring (Professional plan feature).
❌ Mistake #4: No redundancy for critical sites
If your monitoring service goes down, you're blind. Single point of failure is risky.
Solution: Use 2-3 monitoring services for mission-critical sites.
❌ Mistake #5: Setting unrealistic alert thresholds
Alerting every time response time exceeds 100ms = alert fatigue. You'll start ignoring them.
Solution: Set thresholds at 1000ms+ for alerts, review 500ms+ weekly.
Frequently Asked Questions
How accurate is website monitoring?
With 2-check confirmation (checking twice before alerting), website monitoring is 99%+ accurate. This eliminates false positives from temporary network blips while ensuring real downtime is detected within seconds.
Can I monitor websites I don't own?
Yes, but only public-facing sites. You can monitor any website that's accessible via HTTP/HTTPS, which is useful for tracking competitor uptime or monitoring partner sites.
What's a good uptime percentage?
99.9% uptime (three nines) means 43 minutes of downtime per month—this is standard for most websites. 99.95% (26 minutes/month) is good, and 99.99% (4 minutes/month) is excellent for critical services.
Do I need to install anything?
No! Website monitoring is cloud-based. The monitoring service checks your site from external servers, so there's nothing to install on your website or server.
What happens if the monitoring service goes down?
This is why redundancy matters. For critical sites, use 2-3 different monitoring services. If one monitoring service has an outage, the others will still alert you.
Ready to Start Monitoring Your Website?
Set up your first monitor in under 2 minutes. Free forever plan—no credit card required.
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